A Glimpse Of The Mashantucket Pequot Museum

Casino Culture - From Connecticut's Gaming Halls

October 16, 1997|By MARCI ALBORGHETTI; Special to The Courant

The Mashantucket Pequots are spending millions revealing their past through a new museum. The Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center, on the reservation across the cedar swamp about a quarter-mile from Foxwoods Casino, is scheduled to open nest June 1. The 175-foot museum tower and viewing platform is already visible from the picture window near Foxwoods' concourse escalator.

With a $135 million price, funded by the casino and other tribal businesses and enterprises, the project has grown in scope and ambition. Its current design calls for more than 300,000 square feet, combining a public museum that will tell the story of the Mashantucket Pequot tribe with a research center focused on the histories and cultures of all Native Americans.

Plans for the museum and center encompass a 20,000-year period.

Permanent exhibits, including a half-acre Pequot village, circa 1550 with Native American-crafted clothes, furniture and tools, comprise 85,000 square feet. Near the village, an escalator will take visitors down through a simulated glacial crevasse to see how frigid New England looked 18,000 years ago. A 5,000-square-foot temporary exhibit space will feature Native American arts, performances, dance, storytelling and crafts.

In two 70mm, 120-seat theaters, museumgoers can watch the dramatization of the 1637 massacre of the Pequot village in Mystic or spend time with the interactive computer programs that enhance the various displays and programs. Armchair archaeologists can take a guided site tour of the continuing outdoor archaeological excavation of the 17th-century Fort at Mashantucket, just outside the museum and research center. Self-guided tours of a re-created 1780 Pequot farmstead on a 2-acre outdoor exhibit space next to the facility will demonstrate the differences in tribal life after contact with white people.

The center doesn't ignore those more interested in formal study. A 420-seat auditorium will be available for lectures, symposiums and performances of Native American dance, music, storytelling and poetry. A 150,000-volume library will concentrate on American Indian histories and cultures, and a children's library with a 10,000-volume capacity will be particularly useful for school classes expected to visit the completed facility from throughout the Northeast. The research component also includes archaeological and ethnological collections referencing eastern North America, research and conservation laboratories and collections storage, and print and electronic archives with collections of Native American artifacts and information.

David Holahan, manager of public relations, says the basic structure is in place, allowing work to continue throughout the winter on exhibits. He described the motivation behind the tribe's commitment to the center as ``a feeling that Native histories have been told largely by white people, so something has been lost in the translation. Even `Moby-Dick' mistakenly calls the Pequots an extinct nation,'' Holahan said, ``so this facility is about telling the story of the Eastern Woodland tribes from their perspective, not Hollywood's.''